


the real treasure

by brighter



Category: Not Another D&D Podcast
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Romance, Speculation, naddpod, one big bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-04 20:51:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18820483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brighter/pseuds/brighter
Summary: It was leading up to this.





	the real treasure

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers up to Episode 57.

The first thing Hardwon thought when he saw Moonshine is, "oh no, she's hot."

 

Hardwon had had enough of hot girls, frankly. Hot girls always had an air of too-good-for-you. Hot girls dated you to get back at their fathers. Hot girls were heartbreakers and Hardwon was tired of getting his heart broken.

 

Then Moonshine came closer and he noticed the mushrooms in her hair. She was chasing a possum, who scrambled around the bar maniacally. She smelled like dirt and sun and sweat. Her worn overalls were muddy at the ankles.

 

Moonshine, he had the feeling, didn't think she was too good for anybody. Something about that was honest.

 

* * *

 

The thing about them was that they did it all backwards.

 

Hardwon hadn't had sex — though he was loath to admit it — but he was fairly certain the sleeping together physically came afterwards. Instead of the usual order, he found himself curled around Moonshine just after entering Galaderon, not having done so much as holding her hand prior. He had a careful hand on her stomach where her shirt had hiked up. Paw Paw mewled softly on the pillow above her, and Moonshine's feet were tangled around Beverly's.

 

Moonshine drooled, of course, and soft snores of unknown origin filled the room. But he found the moment a little beautiful, despite everything.

 

“Hardwon?” Moonshine turned to face him, her freckled nose nearly touching his own.

 

“Go back to sleep. Or trance. Whatever it is you elves do.”

 

She giggled and buried her head into where his neck met his shoulder. She fell asleep like that, with Hardwon breathing in the scent of her hair. He was up for a long time after.

 

* * *

 

Moonshine kissed him, and he felt stronger for it.

 

Hardwon wasn't sure why Moonshine imparted so many of her spells through kissing, but he wasn't about to complain. He was lucky it wasn’t one of her spore-filled kisses of death. Though, he supposed, it wouldn’t be the worst way to go.

 

Moonshine didn't taste sweet at all, likely due to her spice-filled diet. Her lips were chapped. She used too much tongue, as if she was trying to beat his mouth in a fight.

 

It was a good kiss, Hardwon thought.

 

* * *

 

She liked his new hat a lot.

 

It got to the point where she had started to blush whenever he wore it, so he tried to wear it often. One time, in a childish play, Moonshine had tried to filch it off him. She was too short, or rather he was too tall, and in jumping for it she crushed him into the airship railing.

 

“Careful,” he said, steadying himself on her elbow. Moonshine was panting for having chased him around the ship.

 

Her blush grew more furious. She looked at him in a moment's defiance, then said, “it's just a fine-looking hat” under her breath.

 

* * *

 

Hardwon stayed up all night making her coral earrings, because he was a master stoneworker, and he could.

 

She delighted at them: “I just wanted to let you know I'm ovulating right now.”

 

Moonshine just  _ said _ stuff like that. It was enough to drive him crazy.

 

She put them on, and Hardwon gulped at the way they drew attention to her face. Her red hair curled around her ears adorably. He decided then that it was worth sleeping underwater, if he could just stretch out this moment to infinity.

 

* * *

 

Then, of course, Gemma.

 

He remembered her in colours: her red dress, her eyes blue as the cold Frostwind sky, the purple rift casting soft light above them. He had to lift her up to reach his lips, but he found he didn’t mind. With the kiss, it came rushing back to him at once. It was like being 18 years old and lost in the world all over again.

 

She died in his arms.

 

* * *

 

The thing was, Hardwon was starting to feel Gemma slip away. Worse: he didn't mind.

 

* * *

 

Sharing a flask was nearly like kissing.

 

It felt just as intimate with Moonshine leaning against him like she trusted him completely. In the Autumn Court, everything was hazy with sunset. Hardwon picked at the dead leaves on the ground, uncomfortable with the silence. They watched Beverly and Teran explore the owlbear cave together and Hardwon couldn’t help but reminisce on what it was like to be in love. It seemed like Moonshine had the same thought.

 

“Don’t you remember the first time you felt those feelings?” she asked, her voice dreamy.

 

“Yeah, the first and only time,” Hardwon said, then regretted it a little. “She said we could have kind of an open thing,” he corrected.

 

The conversation wandered to the dryads they’d met in the Summer Court. Moonshine proceeded to give him an explicit guide on how to please a woman, which was only a little arousing.

 

* * *

 

Ezra the Unkind had done something to Moonshine. 

 

“I’m disgusting,” Moonshine said. She looked like she was about to throw up. She was grasping at her chest desperately, as though she had been stabbed. She stumbled forward. Her skin grew blue, like she was slowly freezing from the inside, a perfectly preserved crystal.

 

“I’m hideous,” she mumbled, brushing off Beverly’s attempts to help.

 

Hardwon couldn’t take it. Moonshine was humid summer afternoons, the sun high in the sky — she was all light. Watching her succumb to darkness took the breath out of him.

 

He brought out his Queenshammer. He told his dwarven spirits to hold down the fort.

 

And then, he kissed her. It was leading up to this, after all.

 

He couldn’t help himself — he took a strand of her hair and placed it across her upper lip. It fell away, and she was still radiant. This kiss was soft in a way he didn’t know Moonshine could be. He didn’t know it was possible for someone to wear their heart on their sleeve like Moonshine and be more vulnerable still. Moonshine’s expression was stricken, exposed as a flesh wound. 

 

“You’re beautiful, is what I’m trying to say.”

 

* * *

 

In the end: they had fought angels and demons and had come out winning.

 

In the end: they had ventured all over Bahumia, from the Feywild to Shadowfell, from the Crick to the Nine Hells.

 

In the end: they were Scoutmasters, friends, part of the Band of Boobs. They scooped gnomes and ate sliders and slept in one big bed, and it was wonderful.

 

It was inevitable, really, that at the end of everything, Moonshine ran up to him with Paw Paw rustling in her overalls, her gap-toothed smile wide as ever. It was nighttime at the Crick fire pit, and they were having a celebration jambalaya. The air was filled with the scent of crawdads and the alcoholic sting of Crick water. The mushrooms in her hair glowed now, as if they could sense her power, like they knew how far she’d come.

 

“It would be inhospitable of me,” she said, grinning, “not to return the favour.”

 

And then she kissed him, this time with all the gentleness of inevitability. Her body against his was all heat. He instinctively put his hands to her hips, grasping at her curves like he had wanted to for ages. The kiss deepened, because you never quite forgot when you were kissing Moonshine Cybin. If his lip was bleeding from some over-enthusiastic teeth, then hey, that was a price worth paying.

**Author's Note:**

> AKA: Nicole writes for a straight ship the first time, accidentally founds the ship on AO3.
> 
> 1 comment = 1 rat for the Dwarfanage


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